Lost Link to Windows Store on Windows 8 Desktop

Active Member

I am running three copies of Win8:
- Surface RT
- Win8 Pro as primary OS on my shop computer
- Win8 Pro as BIOS selectable boot on my "main computer" in the living room. (Win7 is primary on this system -- separate HD)

Somehow, I have lost the link to the Windows Store on my main computer. It's just gone and I don't know how to get it back. When I list "all apps," it's not there. I have no idea what I might have done to cause it to go away.

Only thing that comes to mind is that I have been trying (unsuccessfully) to add Windows Media Center to that computer. I go through the "Add Features" process, and eventually it tells me it can't do it. Have not yet been interested enough to experiment with that, although I do have to re-activate Win8 after each failed attempt. I have no idea if that has any connection to my lost Store link; it's just FWIW.

I have tried searching for "Store" and "Windows Store," but get only marginally related links.

Active Member

Mr. NK: Thanks for the suggestion, but I think Refresh will be somewhere near the end of my list of things to try. I have a lot of installed material that I don't want to lose. Mostly I use the Store for my RT, but there was one app that I had wanted to run on my Win8 desktop machine as well. Unfortunately, I don't even know when it disappeared, so System Restore would be a daunting, and possibly unproductive, task.

Member

As a temporary solution you can create a shortcut for "ms-windows-store:" (without quotes, but include the colon), or just type that at the RUN prompt, it will bring up the store. I lost a number of icons after a Windows Update once on my W8 laptop and running a "sfc /scannow" at the command prompt (again without quotes but need to run command prompt with admin privileges) brought them all back. The sfc command cleans up any system file corruptions.

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